A Look Back at AcreTrader’s 2nd Land Investment Summit

AcreTrader recently hosted its 2022 Land Investment Summit, a gathering of our farming partners, investors, and professionals held in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where AcreTrader is headquartered.

We founded the Summit in 2021 with a simple aim: to meet our investors and farming partners in person and create a place for them to connect. We quickly recognized a larger opportunity. Working at the cross section of so many industries—agriculture, finance, technology, and real estate, to name a few—AcreTrader was uniquely positioned to foster connections across sectors, cultivate an environment ripe for insight, and potentially serve our clients and farmer partners better.

This year’s Land Investment Summit built naturally on the first, AcreTrader having expanded our circle of partners and clients significantly in the past year. The program covered a broader swathe of the investment and ag industries on the conviction that exchange of context and insight into these diverse worlds will help build stronger partnerships and better outcomes for all involved.

We kicked off the gathering with a welcome from Steve Case, AOL co-founder and author of the recent book The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream, in which Case highlighted AcreTrader as an innovator in middle America.

“This can be the kind of company that creates hope and opportunity in Northwest Arkansas, surprises people around the country. I think they’ll be really impressed by what happens over the next decade as it scales up to be a pretty significant platform.” - Steve Case

Over the next two days, expert presentations and fireside chats provided education and insights sure to help attendees sharpen their investment and business strategies.

Thursday’s ag-focused program honed in on the current economy and how major players in agriculture are adapting to create value in unexpected places, featuring Ben Bienvenu of Stephens, Inc., Dr. Todd H. Kuethe, Associate Professor and Schrader Chair in Farmland Economics at Purdue University, and To Graze co-founder Niall Haughey. Eric Satz, CEO and co-founder of Alto IRA, shared a perspective on how individuals are making farmland a real part of their investment strategies.

A talk on timberland investing from Dr. Jacek Siry of the University of Georgia’s Harley Langdale Jr. Center for Forest Business alerted us to possibilities within AcreTrader’s newest offering type, and we heard from AcreTrader sponsor Sam Mitchell of Wealthcheck about the Australian ag investment landscape, our newest geographical market.

Kenny Fahey, President and CEO of Leading Harvest, gave us a sense of the vast opportunity for sustainability in agriculture and the need for harmonization of standards across the ag value chain. And Rod Parsley of Aqua Ceres, Sky Root of Root Agricultural Advisory, and Bryce McAteer of WestWater Research took a clear-eyed look at what responsible investing looks like in areas that are agriculturally crucial but experiencing water stress.

On both days, farm talks with active agricultural operators and AcreTrader farming partners revealed that for farmers, alignment among all parties of objectives and incentives is key to a productive partnership with our platform. These talks featured farm manager Jason Brewer of Hamilton Agriculture, Corey Dickman of Dickman Farms, and Adam Englehardt of Englehardt Ag Services, Inc., all of whom are managers of farms funded on the AcreTrader platform.

Friday morning kicked off with a live recording of the Animal Spirits podcast with Ben Carlson and Michael Batnick of Ritholtz Wealth Management along with AcreTrader founder and CEO Carter Malloy.

We heard from Matt Marschall, VP and Managing Director of AcrePro California and a seasoned industry professional about how land transactions are changing over time. This set the stage for a few updates from the AcreTrader team on new services and product offerings to modernize land markets. We were particularly excited to highlight possibilities in data analytics and geospatial mapping with our newly released tool, Acres.

“Whether we are helping farmers expand, facilitating access to an important asset for investors, or providing efficient tools for land professionals, it is inspiring to have all of those stakeholders in one room. If the gathering was any indication, the future of the land investment market is bright.” -Michael Iseman, AcreTrader Director of Operations

We’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who joined us for the 2022 Land Investment Summit, and we look forward to continuing to work with all our partners to make buying and selling land common, transparent, and easy in 2023.

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